The Making of Bobby Burnit Part 29

"If you were ten years older I would feel more hopeful about it," he decided bluntly.

The young man flushed uncomfortably. He was keenly aware that he had made an a.s.s of himself in business four successive times, and that Jolter knew it. By way of facing the music, however, he showed to his managing editor a letter, left behind with old Johnson for Bobby by the late John Burnit:

The mere fact that a man has been foolish four times is no absolute proof that he is a fool; but it's a mighty significant hint. However, Bobby, I'm still betting on you, for by this time you ought to have your fighting blood at the right temperature; and I've seen you play great polo in spite of a cracked rib.

"P. S. If any one else intimates that you are a fool, trounce him one for me."

"If there's anything in heredity you're a lucky young man," said Jolter seriously, as he handed back the letter.

"I think the governor was worried about it himself," admitted Bobby with a smile; "and if he was doubtful I can't blame you for being so.

Nevertheless, Mr. Jolter, I must insist that we are going to have a policy," and he quietly outlined it.

Mr. Jolter had been so long a directing voice in the newspaper business that he could not be startled by anything short of a presidential a.s.sa.s.sination, and that at press time. Nevertheless, at Bobby's announcement he immediately sought for his pipe and was compelled to go into his own office after it. He came back lighting it and felt better.

"It's suicide!" he declared.

"Then we'll commit suicide," said Bobby pleasantly.

Mr. Jolter, after long, grinning thought, solemnly shook hands with him.

"I'm for it," said he. "Here's hoping that we survive long enough to write our own obituary!"

Mr. Jolter, to whom fighting was as the breath of new-mown hay, and who had long been curbed in that delightful occupation, went back into his own office with a more cheerful air than he had worn for many a day, and issued a few forceful orders, winding up with a direction to the press foreman to prepare for ten thousand extra copies that evening.

When the three o'clock edition of the _Bulletin_ came on the street, the entire first page was taken up by a life-size half-tone portrait of Sam Stone, and underneath it was the simple legend:

THIS MAN MUST LEAVE TOWN

The first citizens to awake to the fact that the _Bulletin_ was born anew were the newsboys. Those live and enterprising merchants, with a very keen judgment of comparative values, had long since ceased to call the _Bulletin_ at all; half of them had even ceased to carry it.

Within two minutes after this edition was out they were clamoring for additional copies, and for the first time in years the alley door of the _Bulletin_ was besieged by a seething mob of ragged, diminutive, howling masculinity. Out on the street, however, they were not even now calling the name of the paper. They were holding forth that black first page and screaming just the name of Sam Stone.

Sam Stone! It was a magic name, for Stone had been the boss of the town since years without number; a man who had never held office, but who dictated the filling of all offices; a man who was not ostensibly in any business, but who swayed the fortune of every public enterprise; a self-confessed grafter whom crusade after crusade had failed to dislodge from absolute power. The crowds upon the street snapped eagerly at that huge portrait and searched as eagerly through the paper for more about the Boss. They did not find it, except upon the editorial page, where, in the s.p.a.ce usually devoted to drivel about "How Kind We Should Be to Dumb Animals," and "Why Fathers Should Confide More in Their Sons," appeared in black type a paraphrase of the legend on the outside: "_Sam Stone Must Leave Town._" Beneath was the additional information: "Further issues of the _Bulletin_ will tell why." Above and below this was nothing but startlingly white blank paper, two solid columns of it up and down the page.

Down in the deep bas.e.m.e.nt of the _Bulletin_, the big three-deck presses, two of which had been standing idle since the last presidential election, were pounding out copies by the thousand, while grimy pressmen, blackened with ink, perspired most happily.

By five o'clock, men and even girls, pouring from their offices, and laborers coming from work, had all heard of it, and on the street the bold defiance created first a gasp and then a smile. Another attempt to dislodge Sam Stone was, in the light of previous efforts, a laughable thing to contemplate; and yet it was interesting.

In the office of the _Bulletin_ it was a gleeful occasion. Nonchalant reporters sat down with that amazing front page spread out before them, studied the brutal face of Stone and chuckled cynically. Lean Doc Miller, "a.s.sistant city editor," or rather head copy reader, lit one cigarette from the stub of another and observed, to n.o.body in particular but to everybody in general:

"I can see where we all contribute for a beautiful Gates Ajar floral piece for one Robert Burnit;" whereupon fat "Bugs" Roach, "handling copy" across the table from him, inquired:

"Do you suppose the new boss really has this much nerve, or is he just a d.a.m.ned fool?"

"Stone won't do a thing to _him_!" ingratiatingly observed a "cub"

reporter, laying down twelve pages of "copy" about a man who had almost been burglarized.

"Look here, you Greenleaf Whittier Squiggs," said Doc Miller most savagely, not because he had any particular grudge against the unfortunately named G. W., but because of discipline and the custom with "cubs," "the next time you're sent out on a twenty-minute a.s.signment like this, remember the number of the _Bulletin_, 427 Grand Street. The telephone is Central 2051, and don't forget to report the same day. Did you get the man's name? Uh-huh. His address? Uh-huh.

Well, we don't want the item."

Slow and phlegmatic Jim Brown, who had been city editor on the _Bulletin_ almost since it was the _Bulletin_ under half a dozen changes of owners.h.i.+p and nearly a score of managing editors, sauntered over into Jolter's room with a copy of the paper in his hand, and a long black stogie held by some miracle in the corner of his mouth, where it would be quite out of the road of conversation.

"Pretty good stuff," he drawled, indicating the remarkable first page.

"The greatest circus act that was ever pulled off in the newspaper business," a.s.serted Jolter. "It will quadruple the present circulation of the _Bulletin_ in a week."

"Make or break," a.s.sented the city editor, "with the odds in favor of the break."

A slenderly-built young man, whose red face needed a shave and whose clothes, though wrinkled and unbrushed, shrieked of quality, came stumbling up the stairs in such hot haste as was possible in his condition, and without ceremony or announcement burst into the room where Bobby Burnit, with that day's issue of the _Bulletin_ spread out before him, was trying earnestly to get a professional idea of the proper contents of a newspaper.

"Great goods, old man!" said the stranger. "I want to congratulate you on your lovely nerve," and seizing Bobby's hand he shook it violently.

"Thanks," said Bobby, not quite sure whether to be amused or resentful. "Who are you?"

"I'm Dillingham," announced the red-faced young man with a cheerful smile.

Bobby was about to insist upon further information, when Mr. Jolter came in to introduce Brown, who had not yet met Mr. Burnit.

"Dill," drawled Brown, with a twinkle in his eye, "how much money have you?"

"Money to burn; money in every pocket," a.s.serted Mr. Dillingham; "money to last for ever," and he jammed both hands in his trousers'

pockets.

It was an astonis.h.i.+ng surprise to Mr. Dillingham, after groping in those pockets, to find that he brought up only a dollar bill in his left hand and forty-five cents in silver in his right. He was still contemplating in awed silence this perplexing fact when Brown handed him a five-dollar bill.

"Now, you run right out and get stewed to the eyebrows again,"

directed Brown. "Get properly pickled and have it over with, then show up here in the morning with a headache and get to work. We want you to take charge of the Sam Stone expose, and in to-morrow's _Bulletin_ we want the star introduction of your life."

"Do you mean to say you're going to trust the whole field conduct of this campaign to that chap?" asked Bobby, frowning, when Dillingham had gone.

"This is his third day, so Dill's safe for to-morrow morning," Brown hastened to a.s.sure him. "He'll be up here early, so penitent that he'll be incased in a blue fog--and he'll certainly deliver the goods."

Bobby sighed and gave it up. This was a new world.

Over in his dingy little office, up his dingy flight of stairs, Sam Stone sat at his bare and empty old desk, looking contemplatively out of the window, when Frank Sharpe--his luxuriant gray mustache in an extraordinary and most violent state of straggling curliness--came nervously bustling in with a copy of the _Bulletin_ in his hand.

"Have you seen this?" he shrilled.

"Heard about it," grunted Stone.

"But what do you think of it?" demanded Sharpe indignantly, and spread the paper out on the desk before the Boss, thumping it violently with his knuckles.

Stone studied it well, without the slightest change of expression upon his heavy features.

"It's a swell likeness," he quietly conceded, by and by.

CHAPTER XXIII